


Three Hundred and Fifty-One Days

by heyjupiter



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-25
Updated: 2012-06-25
Packaged: 2017-11-08 13:39:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/443764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyjupiter/pseuds/heyjupiter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-movie. It's summer in Kolkata and a young friend helps Bruce cope with the heat and other concerns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Hundred and Fifty-One Days

**Author's Note:**

> Written for pocky_slash's Beat the Heat comment ficfest.

It's summer in Kolkata, and the brilliant Dr. Bruce Banner is lying under a wet sheet, under a mosquito net, staring at the still ceiling fan. He's lucky the room he's been calling home for the last few works even has a fan, but with the frequent power outages, it doesn't even do him any good. The last few nights it's been too hot to sleep, and he's hot and miserable and exhausted. Briefly it crosses his mind how it would feel to let the Other Guy take over. The Other Guy is impervious to such human discomforts.

He sighs, takes deep breaths. It's only because he's so tired that he's even considering thoughts like that. But if the temperatures don't drop, or the power company doesn't get its act together soon, he's not sure how much longer he'll be able to maintain the delicate balancing act that keeps him human. It might be time to move on soon. God knows people need medical help all around the world. Maybe Mongolia. He could live in a yurt. It would be too cold for these goddamn mosquitoes. Maybe Pakistan--it sounded like the Central Asia Institute could use some help these days.

There's a quiet knock outside his door, which surprises him. Usually when people want him, they don't knock. They yell, "Doctor!" or "Emergency!" or sometimes they just wail. They don't know why he's here, and thank God (or gods) for that, but they've come to know he'll help them if he can. Bruce runs a hand through his hair and calls, "Hello?" He can switch languages if he needs to, but he's tired enough to be lazy about language.

"Doctor?" a boy calls quietly. "Are you awake?"

Bruce's eyebrows furrow. It's Vijay, a kid who lives nearby. Bruce had treated Vijay's younger brother's malaria, and ever since, Vijay had tagged along whenever Bruce would let him. It makes Bruce uncomfortable. He doesn't want hero worship, and he doesn't want anyone to get close to him. They'll only get hurt. But Vijay is polite and persistent. He's smart, and he likes to practice his English (his third language, after Bengali and Hindi) with Bruce. And he can be helpful, too. He'll let Bruce know about families who are sick but too scared to ask for help, or about people Bruce has accidentally offended, and how to make amends.

Besides all of that--well, Bruce isn't above feeling loneliness, and the company of a friendly teenage boy is better than the suspicion of most of the adults around here.

Bruce crawls out from under his sheet and his mosquito net and blindly pulls on a pair of boxers. Then he opens the door and asks, "What's wrong?" In the moonlight he can see a few of Vijay's younger siblings stand behind him, occasionally stealing glances at Bruce but mostly looking elsewhere. Vijay's the oldest, at thirteen, though he could pass for ten.

"Hot, isn't it?" Vijay asks.

Bruce takes a deep breath, staying calm. "Vijay, it's after midnight. Did you kids come here to tell me how hot it is?" He hates standing around making pleasantries when someone might need his help.

"Forgive me, doctor, just--well, without power, it is too hot to sleep. We thought you might want to come with us. To the river."

"The river?"

"The Hooghly River. It is not so far from here. You could cool off."

Bruce knows where the Hooghly River is. He also knows how polluted it is. He hesitates for a second, and then wants to laugh at himself. He's already been exposed to enough gamma radiation to kill someone, and God only knows what kind of environmental toxins these kids are exposed to on a daily basis. A late night river trip on this sweltering night isn't going to be the breaking point for any of them.

"All right," he says. "Thank you." He slips on his sandals, and heads out. As they walk, he guiltily noticing that half of Vijay's siblings are barefoot. And it isn't like the other ones have much to brag about in the footwear department.

But his concern about that fades when they make it past the mucky banks to the river, which is teeming with people under the moonlight. Bruce watches as the kids stop to lift up handfuls of water and let them drop back into the river, whispering prayers. The river is a branch of the Ganges, which is sacred, and Bruce follows suit. He wouldn't want to offend anyone, least of all a river. Then he wades in with the kids and can't quite keep himself from saying, "Ahh."

Vijay grins. "Better than home with no fan, yes?"

"Yes," Bruce says. "Yes." He floats on his back, enjoying the water all around him. He doesn't think about what he might find if he analyzed this river water, and he doesn't think about the Other Guy, and he doesn't think about how much longer the hot season might last, and he doesn't think about the monsoon season that will follow the summer.

It's been three hundred and fifty-one days since he's been the Other Guy, but he knows he's not the same Bruce Banner he was before the experiment. Not the same Bruce Banner who Betty loved. But now he's the doctor Vijay thought enough of to bring to the sacred river on a sweltering night. Maybe the water won't wash him clean of his sins (and that's mixing mythologies, anyway), but Bruce Banner is pretty sure he hasn't committed any new ones, not for three hundred and fifty-one days.


End file.
